Archive

Congress has given President Bush $200 billion more dollars to continue the Iraq war and maintain U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.

When you think about all the good that money could have done in America, it’s a crying shame. Think of the number of schools, universities, hospitals, low income housing and homeless shelters that could have been built for that money.

Instead, it’s just $200 billion dollars down the drain in a never ending war. It’s like a bad movie that refuses to end.

House passes $162B for wars in Iraq, Afghanistan

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House has voted to provide $162 billion for President Bush to carry out U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of his term.

The 268 to 155 vote would bring to more than $600 billion the amount provided by Congress for the war in Iraq since it started five years ago. For operations in Afghanistan, it comes to almost $200 billion, according to congressional analysts.

Many costly solutions to the massive U.S. mortgage crisis have been bantered about, several undertaken with no success. There are now ghost towns in pockets of the United States, as a result of millions having lost their homes.

Contrary to President Bush’s ignorant, irresponsible spin on the story in attempts at absolving his poor presidency of any guilt in what transpired, it is not due to Americans buying homes they couldn’t afford. The nerve of you. It’s really rich coming from someone whose granddaddy was banker to the Nazis. I see where you get your banking policies from (Prescott Bush’s Nazi affiliated “Union Banking Corporation”).

The Bush administration left the banks unregulated and they went hog wild gouging the American people, producing this unprecedented crisis.

Side bar: the Bush family was also involved in the Savings & Loan banking crisis of the 1980’s that turned into a big scandal.

S&L Times Twenty

(Neil, George jr., George sr. and Jeb Bush)

The current mortgage crisis makes the Savings And Loan crisis of the 1980’s look tame. The Bush family was mixed up in that one as well, via Neil Bush running a failed bank the taxpayers had to bail out for almost 2 BILLION DOLLARS and Jeb Bush defaulted on a loan that cost the taxpayers $4,000,000.

The Savings and Loan crisis cost the U.S. taxpayer $124.6 billion. The current banking crisis has cost the US taxpayer far more. The Fed has already dumped several hundred BILLION into the banking sector in attempts at correcting the crisis. None of it has worked.

And what is president Bush’s solution to the banking crisis: *sound of crickets*

CONGRESSIONAL INTERVENTION

It was reported last week that the government via Congress wants to buy up foreclosed homes, which I think is unwise. That’s just more spending on an already buckling treasury.

You need to give people their homes back that were foreclosed upon through fraud and or gouging. It would take months, but it can be done.

It is the correct, viable solution, as opposed to wasting many billions in taxpayer money buying back homes that went into foreclosure, because you failed to do your jobs in properly regulating the banks the first time around.

Remove all the excessive fees and financial penalties that were piled on these mortgages, put people back in their homes where they left off before it went haywire, and at a decent, FIXED interest rate, so they can make payments again on what they worked hard for before it was improperly taken through gouging and fraud.

It’s better than blowing billions, possibly trillions in taxpayer money to buy back homes you may not be able to fill, as you destroyed millions of people’s credit when you took their homes through gouging and fraudulent foreclosure.

At this point there are probably more people in America with bad credit than good. You do realize that? That’s another thing, you need to regulate credit card interest fees. Is there any wonder people are always in debt when you have credit card companies charging 27% and 37 % interest.

Putting people back in their homes is also better than the banks owning many and I mean many, vacant homes across America that aren’t selling at auctions, forcing them to do maintenance on the properties and pay taxes on them as well. Then again, some banks like Washington Mutual are idiotic and just might prefer that, as they are proud and very corrupt.

However, to rational, logical people, it is better to have occupied houses with money coming in as revenue, than empty ones costing you money every month in taxes, lawn and other maintenance fees.

It is better to have $1,000 per month, $12,000 per year coming in, rather than an empty house. You multiply that by the many foreclosed homes that ended up vacant due to gouging and fraud on the part of the banks and that’s substantial revenue for the lending institutions, that would help them get back on track.

GOUGING RECAP

Angelo Mozilo testifying in Congress this month

While millions of Americans lost their homes via gouging and his company Countrywide began buckling, Angelo Mozilo walked away with a $168 million dollar golden parachute for his terrible efforts and poor practices. As I wrote in my December 13, 2007 article, “The CEO leaves the company with a golden parachute when they should leave with a golden indictment.”

Several banks engaged in gouging practices pioneered by Kerry Killinger at Washington Mutual and Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide. The heartlessness under which they operate is astonishing.

Washington Mutual

They both became famous in the banking world via offering cheapness that customers couldn’t refuse. They employed heavy advertising and it worked. However, underneath it all, were many incidents of price gouging, excessive fees and extreme interest rate hikes once the American consumer was through their doors.

For example, people who took adjustable loans years ago, were hit with terrible news over the last year and a half that their payments would significantly increase and there wasn’t anything they could do about it. The government sat back and let them do it. People who were paying $500 per month for a mortgage for 10, 15, years, were told out of nowhere the steady rate they had for all that time was gone, and their payment doubled. This was the story of many people, a large number of them losing their homes.

There were other cases of consumers being defrauded out of their homes via Washington Mutual refusing payment or allowing people to commit fraud in wiping out checking accounts homeowners used to pay their bills. This was done to a retired U.S. colonel, among others, to gain his valuable home with vast acreage. Killinger knew, and despite public protest, stole the man’s home and land. This is the kind of heartless animal he is with no respect for the law.

Kerry Killinger

There have been complaints of Washington Mutual holding checks longer than previously disclosed before clearing them and using technicalities such as an item payable on an account being put through at 1PM, while the funds that were previously deposited via check not being available until 2PM, thus creating an overdraft of $27. Those $27 dollar fees ad up and create a lot of revenue.

Many people complained of Washington Mutual’s poor account security practices in allowing individuals from all over the world, unauthorized access to customers’ checking accounts, illegally deducting funds in internet and telephone scams. Many complaints cropped up online of customers losing several thousand dollars a piece in this manner, then being charged excessive, multiple overdraft fees, with Washington Mutual refusing to cover the damage for the miscellaneous, fraudulent charges they allowed.

Just this month, on March 6, 2008, there was a story in the Miami Herald about Washington Mutual ATM machines spitting out receipts for transactions BUT NO CASH.

Other banks followed many of these corrupt practices pioneered by Washington Mutual and Countrywide, to boost revenue, and today we are witnessing the collapse of the U.S. banking industry that created such a ripple effect that it severely harmed the insurance, construction and furniture industries.

Stock Plummet

In the time since my Civil Rights Act article in October 2007 concerning Washington Mutual, their stock has plummeted. At the time it was trading in the $40’s per share, now it’s hovering at $12 per share.

Recently, it was reported the FBI wiretapped 27 million phone calls in one year. Are there really that many terrorists in America. The country would cease to exist if there was that much terrorist activity in one year and not one terrorist has been caught via wiretapping.

Furthermore, if terrorists are speaking in their native tongue and using local lingo or made up jargon, translators will not know what they are talking about anyway.

An innocuous example of this is teenagers who speak English using modern slang and adults looking on baffled as to just what they are talking about.

What were these 27 million calls about, then. No wonder the agency can’t pay its phone bill:

“Can they hear you now?”

By Eric Heyl
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, January 18, 2008

WASHINGTON — National security experts are heralding a bold new FBI initiative that should significantly bolster the country’s anti-terrorism efforts.

The bureau announced today that it will set up payment plans to gradually pay off its overdue phone bills. The move is intended to enable the bureau to eventually resume numerous wiretaps that telecommunications companies have shut off because of the delinquencies. http://www.pittsburghlive.com

FBI Recorded 27 Million FISA ‘Sessions’ in 2006

At the end of 2006, the FBI’s Telecommunications Intercept and Collection Technology Unit compiled an end-of-the-year report touting its accomplishments to management, a report that was recently unearthed via an open government request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Strikingly, the report said that the FBI’s software for recording telephone surveillance of suspected spies and terrorists intercepted 27,728,675 sessions.

Twenty-seven million is a staggering number given that the FBI only got 2,176 FISA court orders in 2006 from a secret spy court using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

According to the math that means each court order resulted in 12,742 “sessions,” all in regards to phone, not internet, surveillance.

Due to the violence and turmoil occurring in Iraq, the Prime Minister has pledged to protect local Christians from sectarian violence.

With an already 4,000,000 Iraqis displaced, there needn’t be any more violence and disenfranchisement.

It is my sincere hope that the war will end soon, US soldiers return home and Iraqis who have taken refuge in other countries like Syria, will return and rebuild.

The President and Halliburton, since they got the bulk of the jobs, should rebuild the country they bombed on poor intelligence.

Halliburton should also do it at cost, to the American people, as the US treasury has suffered enough under mismanagement and unruly spending, via the transgressions of the President, Vice President and Congress.

Halliburton was a deciding factor behind that war and now they want to hightail it to Dubai to live and work in the lap of luxury under very favorable tax laws.

The US economy is in the worse shape it’s been in decades, and you helped make that mess, you should stay here and help clean it up.

Your tax revenues should go into the U.S. treasury. You’re one of the last companies that should be looking to leave this country:

Iraqi PM Pledges to Protect Christians

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq’s prime minister pledged Saturday to protect and support the Christian minority that has been fleeing the chaos and sectarian violence in the country.

After receiving the Chaldean patriarch of Baghdad, Emmanuel III Delly, Nouri al-Maliki affirmed his government’s readiness and determination to defend the small community and to stop the outflow of Iraqi Christians, according to a statement released by al-Maliki’s office.

Delly, who is the head of Chaldean Church in Iraq and spiritual leader to all Chaldeans, has been outspoken about the need to protect minority Christians from Iraq’s spiraling violence.

Earlier this month, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Delly a cardinal, when he named 23 new “princes” of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Christian community here, about 3 percent of the country’s 26 million people, is particularly vulnerable, and has little political or military clout to defend itself.

Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Iraqi Christians, who are mostly Chaldeans, have been targeted by Islamic extremists who label them “crusaders” loyal to U.S. troops.

Churches, priests and business owned by Christians have been attacked by Islamic militants.

Seeking better and safer life, about 50 percent of Iraq’s Christians are thought to have left the country, according to a report issued by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which advises the White House and Congress. http://ap.google.com

George Bush is shaping up to be the Britney Spears of Presidents. Start off strong, but shaky, substance and position questioned, then crash and burn.

Some believe he won the election, some believe he did not. It was a lip sync victory for some. All that’s left for him to do now is flash, which I trust he won’t

He proclaimed faith in God, even referring to himself as a Christian, but his conduct in very important matters has been anything but.

The war has claimed many lives and usurped over 1 trillion in tax dollars, with the President requesting tens of billions more. Congress, inexplicably, has given him a blank check, underwritten by your tax dollars, for a war the White House lied to the public regarding.

If he had told people what he was truly doing with that war they would have told him: you can’t control that rambunctious region nor its assets and you’re going to send the U.S. economy in a terrible tailspin, from which it may never fully recover.

But, moving on from the spilled blood milk for a second. Let’s look at some other lesser, but important factors, in where the nation is headed.

Record Number Of Citizens Lose Their Homes To Foreclosure

This year a record 3 MILLION Americans have lost their homes, breeding the worst mortgage crisis in U.S. history that George Bush does not have the mental capacity to fix.

Said mortgage crisis has caused foreign banks with a culminated trillions in assets to pull out of American financial institutions, freeze assets abroad and adopt a, “We’re not lending you anymore money until we see where this crisis is going” attitude.

U.S. Dollar Declines

The U.S. dollar has decreased in value. So much so that the Euro and Pound have soared and last week, the Canadian dollar caught up with the U.S. dollar for the first time since 1976. That can be interpreted as erasing 30 years of progress.

Bush In Denial

President Bush Busted Using Crib Sheets

Yale all over again, I see.

Over the last month, economists who don’t use crib sheets, have rendered some dire predictions as to where they think the economy is headed. Yet Bush in his weekly radio addresses continues to declare the economy is “strong.”

Which economy are you looking at? You do realize the £ is not the same as the $ sign.

Citizens are suffering. There is no way Bush’s daze of denial is going to help matters. Since when did denial ever solve a problem.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the world entered it with Britain being number one. By the end of the 20th century, America was number one. Citizens and immigrants from all over, engaged in free enterprise, started businesses and became success stories, and thus the American Dream was born.

You however, Mr. Bush, adopted a terrible financial philosophy on how to run a country…into the ground. You started a costly deceitful war, spent money like it was going out of style and took care of the corporations that were trampling the citizens.

Banking Industry Allowed To Gouge And Swindle Citizens

You left the banking industry unregulated at the worst possible time in history – during the country’s most expensive war. There were credible reports coming out from all over the country of deceitful banking practices gouging citizens and swindling their homes and you did nothing.

Because in your mind, corporations and big business come first, which is a stupid financial motto, but clearly one you live by.

Banks took predatory lending to new extremes during your administration. They knew the ally they had in you and gouged the financial life out the country’s citizens.

Americans were enticed with low introductory new loan and refinance rates, didn’t grasp what they were truly signing and now people who had $600 mortgages are being told THIS YEAR their new mortgage payment is $1,800 per month. How do you expect them to pay that or do you just not give a hoot because your bills are paid.

I know people that this has happened to. There were even people on the national news protesting that they are going to lose their homes to this. MANY CITIZENS ALREADY HAVE. The banks are putting the squeeze on citizens all over the country, left, right and center.

But you, Mr. President, allowed these banks to prey on citizens, because in your eyes big business can do no wrong. Well guess what, they can…and they have…and now it’s effecting the country’s bottom line:

Terrible Economic Ripple Effect

This historic mortgage crisis has created a terrible ripple effect. Home builders are going under, as they have built homes people aren’t buying. People can’t afford it, as the cost of living in the country has risen due to the war.

Higher Cost Of Living

The war has driven up the cost of living via added food and gas costs and that’s in addition to you raising many fees across the country for government services to pay for said war. It’s a vicious cycle that you initiated with your deeds.

Bad Credit

Many Americans now have bad credit after you allowed all that unprecedented predatory lending to take place that cost millions of citizens the homes they did have – while others were swindled out of their properties via mortgage scams and unscrupulous municipality boards, as you twiddled your thumbs and watched Iraqi oil…and blood flow.

Therefore, with bad credit, how are citizens going to buy new homes to replace the ones they lost. And your nonsensical excuse last month that the government is not going to bail out people who bought homes they couldn’t afford holds no water and contradicts facts.

So, you’re saying the 3 million foreclosures so far this year are 3 million irresponsible Americans who bought homes above what they could afford and not people who were scammed out of their homes as FBI stats suggest, while others were taken advantage of by predatory lenders, who out of nowhere tripled the figure of their mortgage payments this year, as news reports suggest.

One of my friends was paying $380 per month last year. She is now paying $980 with a nasty Washington Mutual bank rep even sniping “we are not obligated to send you a statement” regarding the payment hike.

Another friend, whose mortgage is with another bank, got the shock of her life today when she opened her mail, only to find out that after 15 years of home ownership with payments of $450 per month, her payment has shot up overnight to $1,800 per month.

And this is the story of many all across America with banks putting the squeeze on citizens to compensate for this mortgage crisis. One that the President and Congress allowed to happen, that is hurting millions of Americans.

I started writing about this issue last November in my Sound Off Column and if I saw this disaster coming why didn’t they. After all, they’re supposed to be the professionals, right.

Industries In Trouble

The crisis is breeding the fall of a few industries. Home builders, furniture stores and ironically, mortgage companies.

For further reference on the latter, see predatory lender Countrywide that almost folded with 28,000 employees until Bank Of America sent a cash infusion. See Eagle First Mortgage and its 75 branches that were shutdown for “illegal lending practices” that defrauded Americans. Also see American Home Mortgage that folded, leaving 6,000 people out of work.

But earlier in the year, what was the FBI’s little dingbat reasoning for this unexpected mortgage crisis: oh, rogue independent citizens are trying to take advantage of our lucrative real estate market. Yea, they were part right – they just left out the unscrupulous banks.

Home Builders Going Under

Recently, there was a developer that borrowed $110,000,000 from a bank to build a condo building on popular Miami Beach. This year he had to walk away from the condo building after failing to sell even a single unit. The bank then foreclosed. His business in ruined. That’s a true picture of what the economy is like now.

Furniture Stores In Financial Straits

Furniture stores worth billions are in financial trouble, some closing, because people aren’t buying furniture to put in the homes they aren’t buying from the builders. Once again, a vicious cycle.

Farmers

The farmers are feeling the heat with the President running away undocumented migrant workers. They can’t afford to pay others to help them run their farms that feed the nation.

Unemployment

With businesses going under in the mortgage crisis, that means jobs are lost, which can cause unemployment to skyrocket. That’s not good for any economy.

But you, Mr. President, clearly don’t grasp that, because you continue to spout your “the economy is strong” speech, while standing idly by as the crisis worsens.

Bush Administration Accused Of Rigging Big Tobacco Verdicts

Former U.S. Attorney Sharon Eubanks

Another example of this practice of yours in looking out for the corporations at the citizens’ expense is illustrated in Big Tobacco.

Last month, I read an excerpt of a book regarding how you “rigged Big Tobacco verdicts” via the court system to benefit your “Big Tobacco friends” in Texas.

Never mind tobacco killed off scores of Americans, who did not know how dangerous those little cancer sticks really were. But Big Tobacco knew, they had advance warning….but they didn’t bother to let everyone else in on what they’d discovered.

Rather than punishing them and giving the money to cancer victims who smoked for years, you protected the corporations. A U.S. attorney, Sharon Eubanks, even spoke out and stated she was instructed to rig award amounts to victims, reducing them by tens of billions of dollars, to protect Big Tobacco. That is unconscionable…and on your shift, Mr. President.

Enron

Then there’s Enron. Credible news pieces have stated that because you and your family are friends with the two CEOs of Enron and their families, they were allowed to continue running that farce of a business.

Rather than stopping the madness, when there were so many terrible warning signs, it was allowed to continue until it culminated into the biggest corporate disaster in U.S. history. Enron hurt many Americans, whose pensions and savings were wiped out.

I saw a 55 year old woman on TV that lost her pension in the whole Enron scandal. She dishearteningly stated she has to work for 10 more years rather than retiring now, as she had planned to do.

Her dreams of retiring with the money she EARNED was destroyed. She was cast into financial uncertainty. Many share her story, while Enron’s executives, your friends, had cashed out to the tune of millions.

But once again, you believe in protecting the corporation, rather than the citizens and it has become a hallmark of your presidency that history certainly will not forget.

It has further come back to burn your administration in a terrible way, as you now have the dubious distinction of being the president when America hit unprecedented financial lows.

The Middle Class Is Disappearing

The American middle class has just about disappeared. Many writers have noted this. It is now rich and poor, when before America had a very strong middle class.

Where This Is All Headed

What is forming is a similar situation to what happened in India, respectfully, with a small group of rich and a large group of poor.

Unemployment is going to skyrocket if the government is not careful.

Bad Financial Ideas

I don’t know who it is that put the idea in your head, Mr. President, that protecting corporate interests at the expense of a country with 300,000,000 citizens was the best course of action, because it wasn’t.

If citizens are broke, struggling to pay bills, losing their homes, they will spend less in the marketplace run by corporations and perform poorly at work at corporations.

You threw ethics out the window and let these corporations do whatever they wanted to the country’s citizens and now the treasury is paying a price for it.

You spent whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted as well, and now the seeds of these terrible decisions are sprouting up all over, threatening to consume the country financially.

You are going to go down as the worst president in U.S. history, but clearly you don’t grasp what that truly means or you wouldn’t have done half the bad things you did.

Senate agrees to raise U.S. credit limit

WASHINGTON, Sept 27 (Reuters) – With the U.S. government fast approaching its current $8.965 trillion credit limit, the Senate on Thursday gave final congressional approval of an $850 billion increase in U.S. borrowing authority.

The Senate voted 53-42 to raise the debt ceiling to $9.815 trillion, the fifth increase in the U.S. credit limit since President George W. Bush took office in January 2001.

“We have no choice but to approve it. If we fail to raise the debt ceiling soon, the U.S. Treasury will default for the first time in its history,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus.

Where are the checks and balances in government? If government employees can hide behind executive privilege or cite they cannot answer questions in Congress, because it is allegedly “classified” information, it makes the congressional body appear quite impotent.

How long is that going to continue before any real answers are forthcoming. Very little is learned in these congressional hearings of late. This has been a bad year in that regard. How can that be productive on the tax dollar. When are they going to start getting some real answers out of people.

It’s getting ridiculous on every level and very offensive. It looks like people have something to hide. Any day now I am expecting to tune into C-SPAN and see the following exchange:

Senator: how much do you know about this scandal?
Government employee: that’s classified.
Senator: was this misconduct within the parameters the President gave you?
Government employee: that’s classifiedSenator: what did you have for lunch?
Government employee: that’s classified.